Rypple teams up with Spotify to reimagine goal setting

Goal setting is traditionally one of the most top-down aspects of business. The CEO sets the agenda with responsibility for fixing targets to reach that goal, cascading down the ranks until the employee on the ground is handed his or her expected piece of the puzzle, often with little to no understanding of how it fits into the larger vision the organization is aiming for.

It is also designed to be more user-friendly than existing goal-setting tools, says Rypple’s co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Debow. “Social Goals 2.0 is about delivering something managers and their teams will actually use day-to-day,” he says. That means more engagement and understanding of how specific tasks fit into overall strategy, even as that strategy evolves, according to Johan Persson, the organizational development manager at Spotify. “For a high-growth company like ours, things change quickly,” he commented. “Rypple enables us to be more transparent across the organization and keep our employees focused on what really matters.”

That’s good for the company, claims Rypple, but also good for the motivation of individual employees, who can see more easily how their work advances the company agenda. “We believe people want to make a meaningful contribution — not just spend their days doing useless busy work that doesn’t move the business forward,” says Debow. Rypple is hoping this new feature helps both organizations and team members track and appreciate that contribution.

Is keeping employees in the loop about how their work contributes to the company’s goals an issue at your organization?